Rosemary Apricots
Rosemary, apricots, sugar and water come together quickly in a very simple, very French dessert.
Servings 6
Ingredients
- 6 firm ripe apricots, halved and pitted
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- leaves from 1 large sprig rosemary
Instructions
- Gently heat sugar in a sauté pan with water and rosemary. When sugar is dissolved, bring to a simmer. Place apricot halves in pan fanny side down, as Ms. Calder so charmingly puts it (the rounded side down, for the less poetic among us) and poach until tender, about 3 minutes—maybe 4 minutes if your apricots are on the firm side of ripe. Don't let them get too soft.
- Remove fruit with slotted spoon and place two halves on each serving plate. Increase heat to medium high and boil the cooking liquid down to a syrup, about five minutes. Spoon around apricots and serve. It may seem runny as you spoon it around the fruit, but it quickly thickens as it cools—essentially as it contacts the plate.
- CAUTION: Be careful about the plates you choose for serving this dessert. The syrup gets very hot and can crack delicate or antique plates, particularly glass. Seriously. I speak from firsthand experience here.
Kitchen Notes
Cooking with Rosemary. You can cook many dishes that call for fresh rosemary with dried rosemary leaves (or needles, as they're often called), using about one third the amount called for. Not this dessert, however—it demands the softness of fresh leaves.
When preparing a dish that calls for a whole sprig rather than the leaves, I often bruise it with a rolling pin or the side of a glass. This releases more of the rosemary's oils and flavor. But the act of plucking the leaves from the stem, as you do for this dish, sufficiently roughs them up.